my songs and shows
Darrel and I joined Gray around the baby grand piano again a few Saturdays ago, which Gray had prepared in some interesting ways, as you will hear in a few of these tunes. I am proud of our patience during this session; it is a generally calm, relaxing meditation.
Here are some videos I shot as we warmed up including Darrel with prepared guitar and Gray playing a Steely Dan song called Pearl of the Quarter.
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I’m writing from Nova Scotia, Canada, far away from the Texas heat, in a rental house overlooking Brier Island on the Bay of Fundy. The rental said there would be a guitar, but alas, no guitar!
I was about to despair when I looked up to see my mother-in-law—who had wandered down the cove—walking back with a guitar across her chest. She’d met a fisherman named Beau Bobby who spontaneously offered a guitar and threw in three pounds of fresh halibut besides!
So I sat on the porch overlooking the ocean with seabirds singing and composed this acoustic instrumental in honor of Beau Bobby, our seaside paradise, and everyday miracles. I hope it brings you the smell of sea air and the sweet slow pace of a cool summer getaway.
Here are some of my favorite photos from the coast:
Several weeks ago Icy Cinema played our first gig, an evening of ambient music called enoscapes1, which was wonderful. The recording didn’t turn out great, so Darrel and I joined Gray in his music room on Monday night to record the three tunes we performed that night. Here they are.
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Here are Darrel and Gray getting sounds as we set up.
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One song that sticks with me, one that I wished I’d written from the first time I heard it, is Love Rescue Me by U2 (with Bob Dylan). I often sing it to myself as a creed, a prayer. I love how the last lines reframe the present with a sober hope that reach for a better tomorrow.
I’ve conquered my past
The future is here at last
I stand at the entrance to a new world I can see.
The ruins to the right of me
Will soon have lost sight of me.
Love, rescue me.
As the story goes, Bono was in L.A. on the Joshua Tree tour when he woke up with this song in his head, wondering if it was a Dylan song. So he drove out to visit Bob in Malibu and the two finished it together.
When Austin’s Music and Entertainment Division launched a pilot program to pay musicians to be street performers, I applied. I got an email a month ago and today made $150 for playing an hour set at 500 W. 2nd St.
Luckily there was a little shade tree I could stand beneath and a breeze to keep me from sweltering. It turned out to be a lovely hour where I tested out my new busking rig (a Roland Street Cube) and streamed it via Facebook Live. I start singing at about 2:10.
